Mr. James Lumley, an old Rocky Mountain trapper, who has been stopping at the Everett
House for several days, makes a most remarkable statement to us, and one, which if
authenticated, will produce the greatest excitement in the scientific world.
Mr. Lumley states that about the middle of last September, he was engaged in trapping in
the mountains, about seventy-five or one hundred miles above the great falls of the Upper
Missouri, and in the neighborhood of what is known as Cadotte Pass. Just after sunset one
evening he beheld a bright, luminous body in the heavens, which was moving with a great
rapidity in an easterly direction. It was plainly visible for at least five seconds, when
it suddenly separated into particles, resembling, as Mr. Lumley described it, the bursting
of a skyrocket in the air. A few minutes later he heard a heavy explosion, which jarred
the earth very perceptibly, and this was shortly after followed by a rumbling sound, like
a tornado sweeping through the forest. A strong wind sprang up about the same time, but as
suddenly subsided. The air was also filled with a peculiar odor of a sulfurous character.
These incidents would have made but slight impression on the mind of Mr. Lumley, but for
the fact that on the ensuing day he discovered, at a distance of about two miles from his
camping place, that, as far as he could see in either direction, a path had been cut
through the forest, several rods wide - giant trees uprooted or broken off near the ground
- the tops of hills shaved off, and the earth plowed up in many places. Great and
wide-spread havoc was every-where visible. Following up this track of desolation, he soon
ascertained the cause of it in the shape of an immense stone that had been driven into the
side of a mountain.
But now comes the most remarkable part of the story. An examination of this stone, or so
much of it as was visible, showed that it had been divided into compartments, and that, in
various places, it was carved with curious hieroglyphics. More than this, Mr. Lumley also
discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as
though caused by a liquid. He is confident that the hieroglyphics were the work of human
hands, and that the stone itself, although but a fragment of an immense body, must have
been used for some purpose by animated beings.
Strange as this story appears, Mr. Lumley relates it with so much sincerity that we are
forced to accept it as true. It was evident that the stone which he discovered was a
fragment of the meteor which was visible in this section in September last. It will be
remembered that it was seen in Leavenworth, in Galena, and in this city by Colonel
Bonneville. At Leavenworth, it was seen to separate in particles or explode.